Conference Agenda

In a 1939 lecture, G.E Moore notoriously offered the following argument against idealism which he deemed a “proof of an external world”: Gesturing with his hands, he asserted that there are two hands in front of him and concluded from this that there are at least two external objects and thus idealism is false.

This argumentation against idealism can be regarded as an instance of an argument schema against any philosophical theory that is revisionary in that it implies the falsity of a pretheoretically exceedingly plausible (‘Moorean’) proposition – most prominently, Moorean arguments have been put forth against scepticism and the moral error theory. A first attempt to explicate the argument schema – for any revisionary theory R implying the falsity of a Moorean proposition M – is:

(P1-I) M (e.g. ‘There were two hands in front of Moore’)

(P2-I) If M, then R (e.g. idealism) is false

(C-I) R is false

I will argue that while this argument fails to undermine revisionary theories, an alternative version of the argument schema provides an effective strategy against revisionary theories. I will finally sketch a strategy for the revisionist to attack MOORE II’s main premise and assess its prospects.